IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.

We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.

1. How plastics are poisoning us

Elizabeth Kolbert examines how plastic is making its way into our bodies, and whether we will ever be able to get rid of it.

(The New Yorker, approx 15 mins reading time)

Simon, a science journalist at Wired, is especially concerned about plastic’s tendency to devolve into microplastics. (Microplastics are usually defined as bits smaller than five millimetres across.) This process is taking place all the time, in many different ways. Plastic bags drift into the ocean, where, after being tossed around by the waves and bombarded with UV radiation, they fall apart. Tires today contain a wide variety of plastics; as they roll along, they abrade, sending clouds of particles spinning into the air. Clothes made with plastics, which now comprise most items for sale, are constantly shedding fibres, much the way dogs shed hairs. A study published a few years ago in the journal Nature Food found that preparing infant formula in a plastic bottle is a good way to degrade the bottle, so what babies end up drinking is a sort of plastic soup. In fact, it is now clear that children are feeding on microplastics even before they can eat. In 2021, researchers from Italy announced that they had found microplastics in human placentas. A few months later, researchers from Germany and Austria announced that they’d found microplastics in meconium—the technical term for an infant’s first poop.

2. Canadian wildfires

How wildfires burning in Canada have prompted questions about what strategies can be used to tackle similar blazes in the future.

(The Guardian, approx 8 mins reading time)

US, Australian, New Zealand, South African, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mexican, Chilean and Costa Rican firefighters have joined the struggle in Canada, highlighting how countries around the world are contending with shared and intensifying catastrophes fueled by the climate crisis. But key differences in approach have prompted new questions about best practices in the face of a global challenge. Along with new types of terrain, US firefighters in Canada have encountered different techniques in the early stages of a burn, a new set of safety protocols, and contrasting requirements for protective equipment. As federal firefighters who have worked across the US, Mueller and his team were accustomed to dropping into new jurisdictions and containing flames on a variety of vegetation-types. But Canadian policies, determined by each individual province, required some shifts in strategy.

3. The rise of AI music

How AI-generated music is becoming more prominent in the music industry, and how creating new music with the vocals of artists who are long dead could be the next big thing.

(Rolling Stone, approx 17 mins reading time) 

There’s a world where voice-cloned songs could stay mostly underground, as a fun, non-monetizable gimmick that could benefit from the hands-off approach labels had toward rap mixtapes. “Essentially, we’re giving the world the ability to create mixtapes,” says copyright attorney Ateara Garrison. Or maybe it’s even more faddish. “Voice substitution is likely going to play its course a little bit,” says Uberduck’s Wener. “I don’t think it’ll ever go away. But like mash-ups, it’ll probably have its heyday and then get old. But, you know, mash-ups still exist, right?” Still, AI is moving quickly, and the most consequential use cases for voice-cloning may have not yet emerged. Already, online amateurs are replacing Paul McCartney’s more weathered older vocals on his latter-day songs with clones of his Beatles-era voice, with promising results. Tech-savvy fans have given the same rejuvenating treatment to recordings of Axl Rose’s recent live performances with Guns N’ Roses. Right now, there’s a slight delay in even the best processing scenario, but once that goes away, artists could start using AI clones of their own voices live onstage, as a sort of supercharged AutoTune.

4. Childhood during war

A devastating portrait of an 11-year-old boy navigating childhood while living near the Eastern front lines of the Donbas region of Ukraine. 

(New York Times Magazine, approx 11 mins reading time)

Before the war, Yegor and his parents spent summers at their farm some four hours away. Now only his father, Sasha, remained there, trapped behind Russian lines caring for the home and animals on the road out of Mariupol. The nearby playground — like most playgrounds in Donbas — was empty. The risk of being hit by unpredictable small-artillery fire was too great. But the war had forced Yegor into a sedentary life, almost always behind closed doors. He was determined to get some physical activity. Yegor no longer flinched when shells were fired off from positions near his home. He had learned to decipher between outgoing and incoming fire. It pained Lena to see her son squander his childhood watching the bloody parade of soldiers in the hospital, day after day. He defined his life by before the war and after. “The war separated me from many things: from friends, from my dad and everything, basically everything that made me happy,” Yegor said. “It took everything from me, that’s all. Separated me from my godfather, from my brothers, separated me from all this.” 

5. The Titan submersible

A comprehensive overview of what happened to OceanGate’s Titan submersible, and how the tragedy caused concerns over its safety to resurface.

(WIRED, approx 14 mins reading time)

In 2018, David Lochridge, OceanGate’s director of marine operations, was fired after raising concerns about Titan’s experimental carbon-fiber hull before its maiden voyage. In a subsequent lawsuit over his dismissal, he wrote that the hull could subject passengers to “potential extreme danger.” He noted that he had seen visible flaws in the hull’s carbon fiber. These, he argued, could develop into larger tears after multiple dives, raising the risk of the hull failing. OceanGate had a solution. It had developed an acoustic monitoring system to listen for sounds of the carbon-fiber hull failing. If these tell-tale sounds were detected during a dive, the system would alert the sub to return to the surface. Lochridge was unconvinced. “This type of acoustic analysis would only show when a component is about to fail—often milliseconds before an implosion—and would not detect any existing flaws prior to putting pressure onto the hull,” he said in his wrongful-termination claim.

6. Barbie

Director Greta Gerwig and lead actress Margot Robbie speak about the making of the highly-anticipated film about the iconic Mattel doll.

(TIME, approx 17 mins reading time)

The movie is set in Barbie Land, a utopia where each Barbie has an impressive job. As Helen Mirren’s narrator wryly tells us, “all problems of feminism and equal rights have been solved.” The Barbies have sleepovers every night during which they declare how beautiful and confident they feel. The Kens (played by Gosling and Simu Liu, among others) exist as convenient dance partners. But then Robbie’s Barbie begins to think about mortality. Those arched feet go flat. Cellulite appears on her thigh. To combat these changes, she must venture into the real world with Ken, who has been feeling like a mere accessory in Barbie’s dream life. The real world is, well, real. Men in suits at Mattel—led by Will Ferrell’s CEO—make disingenuous speeches about female empowerment; preteens dress Barbie down for wreaking havoc on their self-esteem. Both Barbie and Ken go on quests of self-discovery, and that’s when things get really interesting. (I won’t give away Ken’s story, but Gosling nearly steals the show.) There’s also a surprisingly balletic musical number that appears to be inspired by Grease and Singin’ in the Rain; a car-chase sequence; a mysterious woman in a kitchen; and a running gag about Sylvester Stallone’s penchant for mink coats. And that’s all before things turn philosophical.

…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…

A longread from 2018 about how a rookie FBI agent spent a decade investigating the conspiracy surrounding the murder of a high-ranking member of the notorious Mexican Mafia gang, la Eme.

(The Atavist, approx 43 mins reading time)

From their outpost, Guadian and Aragon watched. The cameras picked up video but no audio. When a few guys clustered together, the officers zoomed a camera in on the inmates’ hands and feet, looking for the surreptitious exchange of weapons or contraband. They scanned for any unusual or sudden movements. A little over an hour into their shift, the officers hadn’t spotted anything noteworthy. Then, at 8:21 a.m., Guadian thought he saw something. “Hey, go back,” he said to Aragon, who was controlling the cameras. Aragon spun a camera to the left and zoomed across the length of the rec yard. There, in a corner, an inmate was lying on the ground. He didn’t appear to be moving.

Note: The Journal generally selects stories that are not paywalled, but some might not be accessible if you have exceeded your free article limit on the site in question.